Arizona Property Tax

Arizona puts two values on the same property every year, and they do different jobs. Once that is clear, most of the confusion about Arizona assessments disappears — including the widely repeated idea that a successful appeal automatically lowers your tax bill.

In this section

• Full cash value vs limited property value — the 5% formula and every statutory exception that overrides it.
• The notice of valuation — what arrives before March 1, and what an amended notice changes.
• The petition for review — the 60-day window, the form, and the two appeal routes.
• Evidence for an Arizona appeal — what the statute requires the petition to contain.
• Arizona property tax deadlines — valuation date, notice, petition, decision, board, court and the two payment halves.
• Arizona property value estimator — work from your notice's full cash and limited values to the 10% assessed value the rates apply to, and estimate the tax.

The two values

• Full cash value (FCV) — the county assessor’s estimate of the property’s market value. Since Tax Year 2015 no tax is levied on this value. It is, however, the value an owner challenges on appeal.
• Limited property value (LPV) — a value set by a statutory formula: the preceding valuation year’s LPV plus 5%, and it may never exceed the current full cash value. Since Tax Year 2015 the tax is levied on the LPV — it is the value used to calculate the property tax bill.

The LPV is not a discretionary judgment by the assessor; Arizona law defines it as a calculation from the prior year’s LPV and the new full cash value, and the county assessors describe it that way. That is why an LPV that rises by more than 5% normally points to one of the statutory re-establishment situations rather than to an error — that list is here.

The third figure: assessed value

Tax rates are not applied to the FCV or to the LPV directly. They are applied to the assessed value — the assessment ratio for the property’s legal class, applied to the limited property value.

• Class three is residential property occupied by the owner as the owner’s primary residence (the statute also covers a residence occupied by a relative, and an owner-occupied home with lodgers), assessed at 10%. It receives a state aid to education reduction on the bill.
• Class four is the residential class that catches what the others do not — including residential property that is solely leased or rented. Second and vacation homes sit here rather than in class three. Class four is also assessed at 10%, but without the class three reduction.
• Other classes carry different, statutorily changing ratios — the class one ratio, for example, phases down to 15% after December 31, 2026.

The class question is a factual one an owner can test, and it is worth testing: a misclassified property pays the wrong amount, and the statute defines the classes rather than leaving them to practice.

Valuation year, tax year

The valuation year is not the tax year. Values are set in the year before the year they are taxed: the valuation set as of January 1 of one year appears on the tax bill for the following year, and it is built from sales data up to that January 1. Market changes that happen after the valuation date are not evidence about a valuation set as of that date — a point that decides a lot of appeals.

Who does what

• The county assessor values the property each year, issues the notice of valuation, decides an owner’s petition for review, and reports the net assessed valuation to the taxing jurisdictions. The assessor is not a taxing authority and cannot levy taxes.
• The taxing jurisdictions (county, cities, school districts and others) set the rates. The rates are applied to the net assessed valuation to produce the bill.
• The county Board of Equalization hears an appeal after the assessor has decided. In Maricopa and Pima counties only, an appeal can continue to the State Board of Equalization.
• The Tax Court — all Arizona tax court appeals are heard at Maricopa Superior Court.

Worked example (illustrative)

Illustrative numbers only — not a valuation, not your property, and not a prediction. Rates in particular are different in every jurisdiction and are set in August.

1. Inputs: the assessor’s full cash value for the valuation year is $400,000. Last year’s limited property value was $300,000.
2. Step — the LPV formula: $300,000 plus 5% is $315,000, and that is below the $400,000 full cash value, so the limited property value is $315,000.
3. Step — the ratio: for a class three residence, ten per cent of $315,000 gives an assessed value of $31,500.
4. Step — the rates: if the combined rate for the jurisdictions that apply were $12 per $100 of assessed value (illustrative only), the tax on this property would be about $3,780. Note that the $400,000 full cash value played no part in that arithmetic.

What this tells you: your tax base is the limited value. If your LPV sits well below your FCV — which is common after several years of ownership — then the FCV is not what your bill is built on.

What it does not tell you: that appealing the full cash value is pointless. Correcting the FCV still matters when an error has pushed it below your LPV, when the classification is wrong, or when the property record itself is wrong. What follows from the statute is narrower and worth stating plainly: a successful reduction of the FCV alone changes the tax base only if the corrected FCV falls below the LPV that the formula produces.